So my friend came to visit this week.  She was supposed to stay with me for most of the week, but she ended up staying out of the house for two days while we finished up the Plague.  Someone was sick in our house for 12 days straight.  12 days.  And I was one of those people for five of the days.  And the rest of those days, I was taking care of other ill people; sometimes while I was sick.  So that sucked.  But she took pity on me and herself and came later in the week so I could have a day to bleach.

2014 hasn’t had the easiest start.

*******

And now the blogs…

But first, second helpings of the posts that appeared in the open comment thread last week.  In order to read the description before clicking over, please return to the open thread:

• “Wow” (Mrs. Spit)
• “7 Years – Retrospective” (Outlandish Notions)
• “In Which I am Learning to Live with the Ache” (Sarah Bessey)
• “A Letter to My Husband” (Waiting for Baby Bird)

Okay, now my choices this week.

Serenity Now! writes the end of her family building story: “I’m not surprised it didn’t work. I’m not even heartbroken. There was no more heart to break, no real hope left for us, not really.”  It’s the peace that she comes to by the end of the post that will stick with you for many hours after you walk away from the words.

A Separate Life has a great post in honour of Valentine’s Day giving love to the Internet.  It’s fun to read through what she has gained from her Internet connections and consider your own list.

Me Plus One has a beautiful tribute to her aunt on her blog.  She wasn’t a saint, she wasn’t perfect, but she was wonderfully complicated and human.  And you will bawl — I promise you — at the end of this post.

Life of the Barely Sane has a post about her child’s desire for a sibling.  She writes, “But no sooner had we climbed in the car and the ‘I want a baby’ comments started.  MG was relentless.  Her main argument: you told me to try my best on the beam, so why can’t you and daddy try your best.”  But the part that gutted me is how the feelings of infertility are far-reaching: “For her, I imagine the feelings will be much like mine: something she comes to accept over time yet remains a wistful dream she never truly forgets.”  Read the whole post.

Lastly, Moving Mountains with Small Eggs has a wonderful venting post.  She lays bare all her jealousies as well as what she has.  Just a really great, deeply honest post.  She writes, “But these tears, these are what I have.  These eggs, old and shriveled, this is what I have.   These delays in my infertility treatments, this is what I have.   This box full of unused medications leftover from so many procedures, this is what I have.”  I hope she gets the other half of her broken heart.

The roundup to the Roundup:  My friend was here to visit. And lots of great posts to read.  So what did you find this week?  Please use a permalink to the blog post (written between February 14th and February 21st) and not the blog’s main url. Not understanding why I’m asking you what you found this week?  Read the original open thread post here.

Ragnarok — otherwise known as the Viking apocalypse — starts this weekend.  I taught Ragnarok in my mythology class for many years, so it’s sort of bittersweet that I’m not hunkered down with my former students to witness the end of the world.  But, you know, my family is good enough.

According to Time magazine’s coverage of this historic, one-time (since… you know world = over) event,

Ragnarok goes down after the god Loki’s wolf grandson Skoll eats the sun, a very unchill thing to do. His brother eats the moon. This somehow unleashes their wolf-dad, Fenrir, a noted bloodthirsty curmudgeon.  The Midgard snake Jormungand will surface from the depths of the sea. It gets worse from there. All the gods, like Odin, Thor, and some others that do not currently have days of the week named after them, show up to fight each other. It’s kind of like the Hunger Games but with pissed-off ancient deities. The earth will sink, the world will burn, and things will get maximum gnarly, death-wise.

The shit is going to get real on February 22nd.  I’m assuming Nordic time.  Which means that it will still be the 21st over here when the streets start to run with blood.  So really, you don’t have a lot of time left to choose your side and grab a weapon.

On the off-chance that the year is off and the world doesn’t end, I’m excited to watch the bobsled competition on the Olympics this weekend.  It seems a decent trade-off for the world’s rebirth.

I09 knows me so well.  They had a post yesterday afternoon titled, “You are Suffering from Womb Envy.”  Well, yes, yes, I am.

Though apparently, because I identify as female, I am suppose to have penis envy.  I’m supposed to be checking out penises and wishing I had my own.  I can’t say that has ever happened to me.  I’ve never sat there and wished I had male genitalia.  If anything, the opposite is true: I am glad I don’t have male genitalia, even if it means I earn 77 cents to every one of Josh’s dollars.

Image: Timothy Swinson
(I’m bringing this back for a second day in a row because what else illustrates penis envy other than a metal penis-like pole encased in barbwire? I love this picture’s versatility so much.  How many other ways can I use it?)

Interestingly, Freud’s penis envy stems from a place of feeling unwhole.  Of seeing a body with more and wondering why your own body has less.

Womb envy was an idea created by Karen Horney in response to Freud’s penis envy.  Womb envy comes about, according to i09,

When men realize that they are not as in control of their lives as they thought they were. They want a son to carry on their name. They want a family. They’re powerless to do that on their own. Achieving their goals depends mostly on the labor, and control, of someone else’s body. They envy women’s ability to produce the life, and they envy women’s ability to be certain of lineage. No mother doubts the maternity of a child. Fathers aren’t so lucky.

The theory was created almost as a tit for a tat — you think we envy you?  Well, then we’re going to say that you envy us — but what about those of us who read the paragraph above and thought, “aren’t I a woman?  And yet that spoke volumes of my psyche.”

I don’t feel in control of my life when it comes to family building.  I want another child to carry on my genes; who allows me to relive childhood again through them.  I want a bigger family.  And I can’t do it on my own.  I can’t even do it with Josh.  And I don’t think I can do it anymore at all with my eggs.  Achieving my goal means paying someone to help me; a lot of money with no promise of it working.  So I envy women who can just… produce life.  Who decide they want a child, have sex, and feel a child in their womb.  Who carry that child to term and deliver that child according to plan.

Just because you have a womb doesn’t mean that you have a womb.

Poor short-sighted Karen Horney.  How was she to know that there would be thousands of women who grapple with their child’s maternity despite being the mother?

Even with a womb, I have womb envy.  And it makes me feel unwhole.  It makes me wonder why my body was made with less.

Lifetime has a new show coming out where women are… wait for it… infertile.  And then just when it seems as if life on earth is about to die out, 100 embryos successfully fertilize and a lottery is held to see who will become the surrogates to carry these embryos. (Since, because this is television, there seems to be unlimited time to utilize said embryos, no concern about fresh vs. frozen cycles and success rates, nor concern whether the embryos will survive the thaw.  Don’t you wish you lived in Hollywood?)

The general manager of Lifetime calls it: “one of the most provocative and original concepts we’ve ever seen.”

In other words, it’s your life.  But it’s entertainment!

Image: Timothy Swinson
(I was trying to illustrate the concept of dystopia, but doesn’t this look like a metal penis encased in barbwire?)

No, of course, we don’t live in a dystopian future where the human race is dying out, hence why no one takes your infertility very seriously.  After all, if you can’t have a child, it doesn’t really matter because someone can have a child.  Until no one can have a child, infertility won’t be a burning issue except to be used as an entertainment device.  But I do love the Huffington Post title for their article on the series: “Lifetime’s ‘The Lottery’ Is Set In World Where Women Can’t Have Children.”

Do you mean like, now, Huffington Post? Because I’m not sure if you realize this, but there are women in this world who can’t have children. Oh… but again, since some people can have children, it isn’t actually a problem.

I’m being sarcastic, but you would think, based on how often infertility comes up as a fear that artists explore in various mediums, that we would be doing more as a society to aid those experiencing infertility.  After all, it’s apparently society-as-a-whole’s worst fear.  Why can’t we translate that fear to the individual level?  And if not going so far as to create insurance mandates at least extending empathy?  If we can understand the fear of having the human race die off, why can’t we understand the smaller scale: a family’s genetic line dying off?

Strangely enough, the television show is being compared to the Hunger Games.  I’m not really sure how it compares to the Hunger Games since it seems that in the Lottery, you are being chosen for the honour of carrying one of the embryos. (Unless you’re killed if you miscarry?  Or if you can’t carry a child, you’re dismissed a la Handmaid’s Tale?)  Whereas in the Hunger Games, you’re chosen and you need to kill everyone else in order to be the sole winner.

I’m not sure if a comparison to staged murder shines the best light on educating the public on infertility.

I doubt that I’ll watch the Lottery mostly because I’m not sure I’ll actually remember the Lottery by the time it hits the small screen.  I have a tendency to see these announcements, comment about them, and then forget the show exists by the time it airs.  And then several years later say, “hey, weren’t they going to make a show called the Lottery?”  And then you all say, “uh, Melissa, it aired and it bombed and it was pulled after a few episodes.”  And then I say, “oh…”  So instead of doing that familiar song-and-dance, I’ll just admit that I likely won’t watch this.  Mostly because I live not being able to have a child, and I don’t need to see a televised depiction of my personal “dark and dystopian” reality.

Will you watch it?  How do you think it will affect the general public’s understanding of infertility — help or hinder?

There was a post on The Stir today which was incredibly offensive and served no purpose except to mock an idea and upset a segment of their readership.  Facebook has finally added additional gender descriptions, and rather than report on them so that the general public knows about the change, The Stir chose to preface the news under the heading “say what?” and then proceeded to make up what they deemed six more choices that Facebook forgot.

By the way, it’s 2014.

Hyperbole is usually utilized to point out the ridiculousness of a situation, so the only thing that readers can gather from The Stir’s decision to print this is that they are against people being able to feel comfortable online.  That they believe that people being able to label themselves with a proper pronoun is ludicrous.  In other words, The Stir, Fox News, and my evangelical neighbours are amongst those last holdouts who support removing someone else’s ability to do something even though in doing so this action does not affect them.

Because whether or not someone else takes advantage of these new choices on Facebook in no way affects anyone else’s Facebook account.

This is the very definition of small-mindedness.

But it brings to the surface sort of the most important guide a writer can use before they post anything online whether that be on Twitter, Facebook, a blog post, or a comment.  Take a page from doctors and first, do no harm.

Image: Adrian Scottow via Flickr

Writers needle, sometimes drawing blood, just as doctors do.  But when we do, it should be to make society healthier in the long run.  We shouldn’t cruelly poke just because we have the tools to do so.  We should slide those needles in order to wake people up, make people think, and draw them out of their comfort zones.  And yes, sometimes we do that through humour, but we should make sure that the humour is actually funny and serves a purpose.  Because when humour doesn’t serve a purpose, it becomes a mockery.  And mocking has more in common with bullying than it does with comedy.

So, Facebook, thank you for adding more gender options.  It was a move in the right direction to be more inclusive.  Because inclusivity rocks.